Italian Food Trivia
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47 free Italian Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
46 free Italian food trivia questions with answers. Italian food trivia that goes well beyond 'what is in a margherita'. This quiz works through the whole table: the pasta shapes and what their names mean, the Roman trio of carbonara, cacio e pepe and amatriciana, Bolognese as Bologna actually makes it, the rules for a true Neapolitan pizza, and the protected names - Parmigiano Reggiano, prosciutto di Parma, mozzarella di bufala, traditional balsamic vinegar - and what those labels really guarantee. Then dessert and drinks: gelato versus ice cream, cannoli, tiramisu, panettone, espresso history, Prosecco, Aperol and limoncello. The easy questions any pasta-lover will get open the set. The later ones - which grape was renamed Glera, how long a Parma ham hangs, which chef started a national row by suggesting garlic in amatriciana - will separate the tourist from the person who has argued about cream in carbonara at an Italian dinner table. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and each question shows its citation, so the set is safe to lift for a pizza night, a cooking club or a pub quiz food round.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which pasta shape's name translates as 'butterflies'?
Farfalle
Farfalle means 'butterflies' in Italian (farfalla is a butterfly); English speakers usually call the pinched rectangles bow ties.
Q 02Orecchiette, the small domed pasta of Apulia, takes its name from which body part?
Little ears
Orecchiette means 'little ears', from orecchia (ear); the thumb-pressed domes of Puglia are classically served with cime di rapa (turnip tops).
Q 03Tortellini are said to be modelled on which body part of the goddess Venus?
Her navel
Legend says an innkeeper at Castelfranco Emilia glimpsed Venus through a keyhole and shaped tortellini on her navel, which is why the pasta is nicknamed ombelico di Venere.
Q 04What does the pasta name 'vermicelli' literally mean?
Little worms
Vermicelli means 'little worms', from verme (worm); Italian vermicelli is cut slightly thicker than spaghetti, while the American version is thinner.
Q 05Pappardelle, the wide Tuscan ribbons, are thought to take their name from a verb meaning what?
To pig out
Pappardelle is thought to come from pappare, 'to pig out' or gobble up, a verb built on pappa, a Latin children's word for food; the ribbons are traditionally served with game ragù such as wild boar.
Q 06Under Italian law, dry pasta (pasta secca) may be made only from which grain?
Durum wheat
Italian law allows dry pasta (pasta secca) to be made only from durum wheat semolina and water; soft wheat flour may be used in fresh egg pasta.
Q 07Which explorer is wrongly credited in popular legend with introducing pasta to Italy?
Marco Polo
Marco Polo did not bring pasta home from China: a geography written in 1154, a century before he was born, already describes dried pasta being made in Sicily and shipped abroad.
Q 08Which dish of paper-thin raw beef is named after a Venetian Renaissance painter?
Carpaccio
Carpaccio was first served at Harry's Bar in Venice, where Giuseppe Cipriani named it after the painter Vittore Carpaccio because the raw beef recalled the deep reds of his canvases.
Q 09Which coffee drink is named after the brown robes of an order of friars?
Cappuccino
Cappuccino is Italian for Capuchin: the milky coffee matched the brown of the friars' hooded habits, and the name first belonged to the Viennese Kapuziner before it reached Italian coffee bars.
Q 10Which cured pork product is the traditional meat in a Roman carbonara?
Guanciale
Guanciale is cured pig's cheek; pancetta is the usual stand-in abroad, and cream is not part of most Italian recipes.
Q 11One of the earliest printed carbonara recipes appeared in a 1952 restaurant guide to which Midwestern US city?
Chicago
Chicago: Patricia Bronté's 1952 guide to the Near North Side printed a carbonara recipe, and when the magazine La Cucina Italiana ran its first one in 1954 it called for garlic and Gruyère.
Q 12Cacio e pepe is made from pasta, black pepper and which cheese?
Pecorino romano
Cacio is the central-Italian word for cheese, here aged Pecorino romano, a salty sheep's-milk cheese; a team that worked out how to stop the sauce clumping won an Ig Nobel Prize in physics.
Q 13Amatriciana sauce is named after Amatrice, a town in which Italian region?
Lazio
Q 21Which strong, high-protein flour do Italian bakers blend into long-fermented pizza doughs?
Manitoba flour
Manitoba flour, named for the Canadian prairie province where its strong, cold-hardy wheat first grew, has enough gluten for long-fermented doughs to hold their structure; bakers use it to 'cut' weaker flours.
Q 22Which Italian bread, created only in 1982, has a name meaning 'slipper'?
Ciabatta
Ciabatta was devised by a baker in the Veneto as Italy's answer to the French baguettes that were taking over the sandwich trade; the flat, stretched loaf looked like a worn slipper.
Q 23Which cocktail of gin, vermouth and Campari is said to be named after a Florentine count?
Negroni
Amatrice lies in the province of Rieti in Lazio (it belonged to Abruzzo until 1927); the sauce evolved from pasta alla gricia, the same dish without tomato.
Q 14Which veal dish topped with prosciutto and sage has a name meaning 'jumps in the mouth'?
Saltimbocca
Saltimbocca is 'salta in bocca', a bite so tempting it jumps into the mouth by itself; it is known today as a Roman speciality, yet it may have begun far to the north, in Brescia.
Q 15In Bologna, ragù alla bolognese is traditionally served with which pasta?
Tagliatelle
Bologna pairs its ragù with fresh egg tagliatelle, not spaghetti, a habit that grew up abroad; in 1982 the Italian Academy of Cuisine deposited an official ragù recipe with the city's Chamber of Commerce.
Q 16Besides ragù, which sauce is layered into lasagne alla bolognese?
Béchamel
Béchamel, besciamella in Italian, goes between the ragù and the egg-pasta sheets in Bologna; Naples builds its Carnival lasagne quite differently, with small meatballs, sausage and hard-boiled eggs.
Q 17Which nut is pounded into a traditional Genoese pesto?
Pine nuts
Pine nuts join basil, garlic, cheese and Ligurian oil in the mortar; pesto means 'pounded', and a 19th-century Genoese cookbook lets cooks swap in marjoram and parsley when basil is out of season.
Q 18Whom did Raffaele Esposito reputedly honour with his 1889 tomato, mozzarella and basil pizza?
Queen Margherita of Savoy
Esposito of Pizzeria Brandi reputedly served the pizza to Queen Margherita of Savoy in June 1889, but later research found no contemporary newspaper mention and traced the story's promotion to the 1930s and 40s.
Q 19How long does a true Neapolitan pizza bake in its wood-fired oven under the AVPN's rules?
60-90 seconds
60-90 seconds is all the rules allow, because the oven runs at well over 400 C; the dough is flour, water, salt and yeast only, and must be opened by hand, never with a rolling pin.
Q 20Despite its seafaring name, which classic Neapolitan pizza has no seafood, just tomato, garlic, oregano and oil?
Marinara
Marinara means 'sailor-style': tradition says poor sailors ordered it, or baked it at sea, because garlic, oregano and oil keep without spoiling.
Negroni: the story goes that in 1919 Count Camillo Negroni asked a Florence bartender to strengthen his Americano with gin in place of the soda water, and the drink kept his name.
Q 24Parmigiano Reggiano graders called battitori check each wheel for internal cracks using what?
A small hammer
The battitore taps each wheel all over with a small hammer and listens for the dull notes that betray internal cracks; wheels that fail are stripped of their rind markings.
Q 25Which crunchy Italian almond cookies have a name that means 'twice cooked'?
Biscotti
Biscotti are baked twice, which leaves them dry and hard enough to keep for a long time; Tuscans, who call them cantucci, traditionally soften them by dunking in Vin Santo wine.
Q 26Which symbol is branded onto a leg of prosciutto di Parma once it has passed inspection?
A ducal crown
A ducal crown is fire-branded onto each leg that passes; the only ingredients are pork and sea salt, and inspectors judge the ham by pushing in a horse-bone needle and smelling it.
Q 27Campania's PDO mozzarella is made from the milk of which animal?
Water buffalo
Mozzarella di bufala campana is made from the rich milk of the Mediterranean water buffalo; cow's-milk mozzarella is called fior di latte, and the name comes from mozzare, 'to cut off'.
Q 28Traditional balsamic vinegar, aged at least 12 years in wooden barrels, comes from Reggio Emilia and which other city?
Modena
Modena shares the protected 'tradizionale' name with Reggio Emilia: it is made only from cooked grape must aged at least 12 years, unlike the cheap, lightly protected supermarket kind.
Q 29Which spice gives risotto alla milanese its yellow colour?
Saffron
Saffron threads steeped in broth turn the rice gold; legend traces the dish to the glassworkers of the city's Duomo, who used saffron as a pigment and in 1574 slipped it into the rice at a wedding feast.
Q 30Ossobuco, the Milanese braised veal shank, has a name meaning what?
Bone with a hole
Osso buco means 'bone with a hole', the marrow in the hollow shank bone being the prize; the braise is finished with a parsley-and-garlic gremolata.